An Academy Award-winning actress with a
string of iconic performances behind her, Reese Witherspoon takes on perhaps
her most challenging role yet in “Wild” - based on the bestselling and
strikingly honest memoir “Wild:
From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” by author Cheryl Strayed.

While audiences will perhaps forever
remember her as the charming lead of “Legally Blonde” - the film that first
propelled her to stardom - or as the redoubtable winning performance as June
Carter Cash in “Walk The Line,” now they will see her in a startling new light
in “Wild.”

As Cheryl Strayed, a woman who sought to
recover her life and discover herself by walking the thousand-mile Pacific
Crest Tale, Witherspoon was required to take her most physically and
emotionally demanding screen journey.

“Reese’s love for the book was so clear and deep, she
really had a profound grasp on who this woman was. She was also up for an incredible challenge,
ready to go completely out of her comfort zone. She came at it with a very
moving humility. There was no ego, just
a desire to get inside this woman alone,”
director Jean-Marc Vallée shares.
Witherspoon came at Cheryl as someone who takes a seemingly naïve,
possibly even ridiculous, go at the Pacific Crest Trail because, no matter how
far she has fallen in her life, deep down she still believes she can kick-start
her own salvation.

There was little doubt that the role
would bring with it extreme athletic demands as Cheryl navigates across rock,
river, ice and snow. Witherspoon brought
a love and respect for the outdoors that helped her to tackle them, but even
so, playing Cheryl meant encountering the wild – in the harsh deserts, high
mountains and also her own head – in all kinds of new ways.

“If I would have
been a person who didn’t love the outdoors, this role would have been
impossible,” she laughs. “As it was, it
was extremely challenging on every level, and far more physically challenging
than I ever anticipated. There was
climbing up the side of a mountain and balancing in river crossings and
marching through chest-deep snow and falling into a freezing river. I had no idea it was going to be as hard as
it truly was. But it was also very, very
rewarding.”

Many of those rewards came from moments that took
Witherspoon into the darkest corners of her psyche. Shooting the moment that opens the film –
when Cheryl disastrously loses her boot on a high pass – felt like approaching
a major life crossroads to Witherspoon.

“I have to say the spot where we shot that scene is one of
most beautiful places I've been in my life,” she recalls. “Being on the edge of
that mountain while contemplating all that was happening to Cheryl in that instant
was intensely emotional. It’s the first
moment when she decides nothing is going to be able to tear her apart. It seems to her that the universe keeps
trying to shred her to pieces. And now
she decides she just absolutely will not let it.”

The heart-stirring vistas rife throughout the shoot were a
constant inspiration for Witherspoon, and a reminder of why the untouched
spaces of wilderness called so strongly to Cheryl, even at rock bottom. “It fills you up,” the actress says. “To see the incredible beauty of our world
makes you believe everything might really be OK. I think that’s how Cheryl came to feel.”

Having Strayed herself on the set also helped. “She was a real touchstone for me,”
Witherspoon explains. “Sometimes the
only thing that gave me a toe-hold in a scene was looking over at Cheryl and
seeing in her face that she lived through this. You see all that she’s been
through in her eyes. And you hear it in
her voice. And following that was the
biggest gift to me as an actor.”

One of this year’s frontrunners
for major film awards and crtitics’ top pick, “Wild opens February 4 in cinemas
nationwide in the Philippines from 20th Century Fox to be
distributed by Warner Bros.